Match Lengths

When I was a young kid growing up in the UK, I loved World of Sport. Like, loved it. I loved the names, the moves, that matches, I really invested in it.

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“This match, overrrrrrrrrrrr Six Five Minute Rounds……..” Wow, that's long, well, to a seven year old anyway.

Couple of years later, the UK was introduced to the World Wrestling Federation on Satellite TV. We watched.

I know a lot of matches look tame these days, but back then for a UK lad, it was like “wow, does anything go here”?

What I did like though was the PPVs. There were lots of matches over the 3 hours. I liked the shorter matches. Two or three minutes, or The Hart Foundation putting away The Bolsheviks in about 5 seconds!

It wasn't the first WWE event I saw, but one of earliest memories of American Wrestling was Mania 6. The card was built on mostly shorter matches with a 20 minutes Hogan – Warrior.

Didn't WCW used to do the same format a few years later? I digress.

Nowadays, matches are usually at least a decent length, but obviously there are less of them. Unless it's a Wrestlemania then there tonnes of them and the event lasts about a week and a half

What do you prefer Scott? More matches of less match length or less matches with a longer match length? Also, right back to the start of the question, what do you think of the old UK World of Sport wrestling?

​I never watched wrestling from that time, so I couldn't offer an opinion on it. For me, I don't mind longer shows and matches, as long as the matches are DIFFERENT. WWE's issue now is that you have 8 matches over 4 hours and basically all working the same style and doing the same near-falls. If you watch something like WrestleKingdom from this year, you have high flying, shoot style fighting, crazy brawling, high level technical wrestling, power matches and comedy matches, all on the same show! It doesn't drag at all because if you don't like something, just wait 10 minutes and there's likely to be something you do enjoy. ​